August 27, 2018 5:12pm EDTAugust 27, 2018 5:09pm EDTTexas, ncaa-footballTom Herman has heard the 'Texas is Back' expectations for some time now, but he only cares about the opinions in his program.Texas coach Tom Herman(Getty Images)

It’s game week on The Forty Acres, and the Longhorns open the 2018 college football season on Saturday at Maryland, a team that beat the Longhorns in an upset last season. UT hasn’t finished better than a three-way tie for second in the Big 12 Conference standings since playing for the 2009 BCS national championship. And Tom Herman begins his second season in Austin facing one of the nation’s most rigorous schedules.

But sure, Texas is back. Fox Sports analyst Robert Smith picked the Longhorns to go to the College Football Playoff. ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit identified the ‘Horns as trending "in a very positive direction." Preseason magazine mogul Phil Steele ranks Texas as his No. 2 surprise team in the nation. The Associated Press has Texas ranked 23rd, while the Coaches Poll has the ‘Horns at No. 21.

That’s not entirely true at a place like Texas, where oil tycoons hungry for burnt-orange success sign checks bigger than Bevo. All those zeroes can ultimately alter a coaching staff. So yeah, some expectations do count.

But Herman says he could care less if you’re buying or selling stock on the 2018 Longhorns.

“It’s just noise,” Herman said. “The only people whose opinions that matter to our program are the people in our locker room and the people in our building. And we understand that — we’re not out to prove anybody wrong, because that would then lend credence to the fact that we care about what people think.”

While Herman says he sees tangible proof this year’s team has made massive strides from last year’s inheritance — which needed a bowl victory to secure a winning record for the first time in three years (the three consecutive losing seasons was Texas’ first since 1938) — he also has stated clearly: Texas is a 7-6 team because that’s what the record says it is.

Now, it’s 2018. Herman and his team can begin to change that narrative on Saturday.

Herman does face a stark reality: Since that fateful loss to Alabama in the national title game, the Longhorns’ record of 53-48 ranks seventh among Big 12 teams.

That’s seventh out of 10, and only two games better than eighth-place Texas Tech.

In the last eight seasons, the Longhorns have a .525 winning percentage, behind the likes of blue blood rival Oklahoma (.802), up-and-comer Oklahoma State (.752), repatriated TCU (.721), new money Baylor (.637) and outsider West Virginia (.602).

The last four years of the Mack Brown era, all three years of the Charlie Strong era and the first year of the Tom Herman era produced four winning records, five bowl games, zero 10-win seasons and nothing even remotely resembling a conference championship.

“The challenges,” Herman said, “were instability. We had, what would it have been, a four-year stretch with three different football coaches, four different athletic directors in 4 ½ years and two presidents. Any time you have that much instability in such a short amount of time, that’s not usually a recipe for success.

“So we have stability. We have the same president (Greg Fenves took office in June 2015), the same athletic director (Chris Del Conte moved in from TCU last December) and the same head football coach (Herman has been on the job for 21 months) and the same staff. … So I think the remedy to that is the inverse, which is stability, and I think we have that.”

Contrast Herman’s version of stability with what his rivals in Norman just accomplished. Former university president David Boren, athletic director Joe Castiglione and former coach Bob Stoops were in lockstep for 18 years, by far the longest streak in the nation when it ended last summer — and believed to be the longest such trio ever in major college football.

Now, Boren and Stoops have retired, and Lincoln Riley — like Herman, a second-year coach — must find a way to keep things going at a championship level after he led the Sooners to the College Football Playoff last year.

“You’ve got to do everything well,” Riley said. “To me, it’s really that simple. If you have any leakage, any holes in your program at any part, it’s gonna show up at some point. … We’re lucky that we’re at a place where we can have a lot of continuity with our coaching staff and our overall staff. Joe, our administration, our president (Jim Gallogly), they have done a great job of backing this group and allowing us to keep the same people, to reward people for doing a great job and that continuity makes a big difference.

“I have seen it a lot in the last year that if you do have any down spots, it all shows up. It all comes to the surface at some point, so you’ve got to hire the right people. You’ve got to bring in the right players and then you’ve got to develop them and keep everybody on the same page.”

“And look, the margin, it’s thin. It’s the difference between being a great, 11-, 12-, 13-, 14-win team and being an eight- or nine-win team; a lot of times (the margin) is very, very little.”

The Texas schedule, and the demand for quality nonconference matchups, doesn’t allow for much time to regroup. Texas opens with Maryland before taking on preseason No. 15 team USC. From there, the Longhorns take on ranked teams in TCU and Oklahoma in a three-week span. Beyond that, dates with West Virginia and Oklahoma State loom.

“To schedule 11 Power 5 opponents, you know, makes the task of rebuilding a little more difficult considering there are schools in other conferences that play eight,” Herman said. “I saw some other Power 5 schools that play two FCS schools in the same season and then two Group of 5 schools. It’s something that needs to be addressed on a national level. I applaud the ones that schedule that way, especially a program that’s trying to rebuild.

“Our first goal, coming from where this program was, I think you certainly have to crawl before you walk, walk before you run and run before you sprint. The word 'process’ gets used a lot in today’s sports culture, but it’s reality, as well. Our goal is to be in contention, to be in the mix to win a Big 12 championship in the months of November and December.”